Page:Lost Ecstasy (1927).pdf/214

 Some, of course!" She smiled. "Compromise or be compromised!" she ended, lightly.

It was only before she left that she mentioned Tom again. Out of deference to the object of her journey she wore very smart black, and she surveyed herself carefully in the mirror and then added an extra touch of rouge.

"Not that it fools anybody, except myself! Kay, don't try to make your cowboy over. Give him a long rope. If I know the type he'll need it. But he'll come back and be glad to, if you're clever with him. They all do, you know."

But Bessie felt, when she got on the train, that she had been trying to teach a child higher mathematics. That was one of the tragedies of experience; it could never help any one else.

Kay wrote a long letter to her mother before she went to bed that night. It was a tragic letter between the lines; her divided allegiance, her love for them all, her regret at having had to hurt them. She never received any reply, for Katherine never got the letter, but she was having her own troubles those days. She hardly noticed the lack of response.

One trouble was a small one, comparatively. She came back from her luncheon to find that Tom had had a letter, and that he had not wanted her to see it. The nurse was carrying it out, torn into minute pink scraps, when she went in. He did not mention it to her, but he was very gentle, very conciliatory, all the rest of the day.

The other was a big one.

The day came when Tom had to learn the truth, that his ankle would always be stiff. Kay never forgot the look in his eyes.

"Stiff?" he said. "Then what did you save me for? I'm through!"

"Lots of men go through life with one leg," said the surgeon. "You've got two. If one's not as good as the other"

Tom laughed. It was not pleasant to hear, and his face was ghastly.

"So that's it!" he said. "Me kidding myself along, and